In February, Gen X darlings Pavement headlined for a crowd of craft beer drinkers that spilled across a muddy lawn outside one of the influential art museums on the earth.
Earlier, the thumping bass of sex-positive electro-punk icon Peaches drew the scene away from experimental dance shows and an installation wall of anatomically accurate vaginas.
Wearing fastidiously curated tatters and post-Sydney Pride rainbow gear, these very cool kids were gathered not in Brooklyn — but deep down under, outside Hobart, Tasmania.
Since opening in 2011, a visit to the Museum of Old and Latest Art (MONA) has been badge of honor.
I first heard of the museum in Latest York. It was “the good art museum on the earth,” a friend told me. I heard about Wim Delvoye’s startling work “Cloaca Skilled,” a posh machine that functions as an animal digestive system and literally turns food into feces right in front of you.
The founding father of MONA, Tasmania-born David Walsh, is equally unconventional. His horse racing betting syndicate made him a fortune. He then spent $75 million renovating the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities into what the museum is today: a labyrinthine campus for daring art and events carved deep into the exposed stone cliffside. It has its own high-concept restaurant, a vineyard, party ferries and a brewery. A hotel is within the works.
Unlike other museums, which change into a line item on an itinerary, MONA (tickets from $23) and its two annual festivals, Mona Foma and Dark Mofo, have change into a first-rate mover of Tasmanian tourism, giving the small speck of land just north of Antarctica serious cultural cred.
“Our signature concert in 2009 was with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,” said Brian Ritchie, the artistic director of each MONA events and bassist for the Violent Femmes. “It announced, ‘Okay, we’re the brand new kids on the block.’ We were immediately successful.”
Today, the museum brings over 500,000 visitors a 12 months to Tasmania. The multi-day festivals, which occur near the summer and winter solstices, bring tens of hundreds more.
“The common stay is nine days,” said Ritchie. “If persons are coming to the festival, they’re also seeing a number of the countryside, browsing and doing wine visits. It has helped brand Tasmania in people’s minds.”
MONA has virtually non-stop music and events, but its next big party, Mona Foma, happens at the peak of the Southern Hemisphere summer. What is going to it appear like? They don’t know.
“We’re never sure quite what’ll occur,” the museum’s website states (ticket prices are TBD). “Past years have seen music on lawns, in concrete boxes small and huge, in a planetarium and within the odd church — art mainly all over the place in the shape of lasers, a table tennis-playing robot and more.”
So if you happen to’ve done the ultra-commercialized music festival circuit, why not book something really far-flung on spec? It’s guaranteed to be essentially the most original scene you’ve been to yet.
“We just we act,” said Ritchie. “We keep doing latest things on a regular basis and the festivals are continuously evolving. They’re not repetitive, like lots of festivals are. Now we have the liberty to vary.“
